5G has been out for so long and 6G is about to come out, why are China Unicom, China Mobile and China Telecom still promoting 4G packages?

The popularity of 5G has brought more convenience to people's lives, and it has been widely used in the fields of Internet of Things and autonomous driving. However, the three major operators have recently launched a number of new 4G packages, which may make some people curious: Why are they still competing to launch 4G packages in 2021 when 5G is rapidly popularizing?

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01 Use 4G packages to guide 2G and 3G users to upgrade

Although 5G has been launched for more than a year, it is not easy to promote it. First of all, it is not difficult to upgrade a 4G card to a 5G card, but you still need to use a 5G mobile phone to use the 5G network more quickly, and the 5G package fee is also relatively high. Now most people think that 4G is enough and there is no need to upgrade to 5G.

For this reason, industry insiders speculate that the operators are launching a number of new 4G packages in order to increase their presence in the mobile communications market. As there are still some 2G and 3G users in China, if the operators can guide 2G and 3G users to upgrade through the new 4G packages, it will help boost performance growth.

02 4G users still account for the majority

According to the April 2021 operating data report released by the three major operators, the scale of 5G package users exceeded 400 million, reaching 420 million. However, compared with the total number of mobile users of the three major operators, which is as high as 1.605 billion, 4G users are still the mainstream. Although China Telecom and China Unicom no longer disclose the number of 4G users, as of the end of April, the number of 4G users of China Mobile alone reached 790 million, accounting for nearly half.

Although 5G is highly anticipated, the current situation shows that the scale of 4G users is still large and the 4G market still has potential. In this case, it is a more pragmatic choice for operators to continue to cultivate the 4G market.

03 Balancing 5G network construction and operation costs

Compared with 4G base stations, 5G communications use a higher frequency band, so penetration and coverage will be worse than 4G. The construction cost of 5G networks is high, and the scale is 2 to 3 times larger than 4G. For details, you can see the difference between 4G and 5G networks.

Overall, if 5G wants to achieve network coverage comparable to that of 4G, it will need to build 10 million 5G base stations, which will cost at least 2 trillion yuan.

With the pace of large-scale investment in 5G, the three major operators will step up the promotion of 5G packages while launching a number of new 4G packages, which will help ease financial pressure and lay the foundation for these users to upgrade to 5G in the future.

Therefore, 4G will continue to coexist with 5G for a long time in the future. For the majority of users, 4G packages are still a cost-effective choice.